Personalized medicine often requires obtaining a genetic or protein profile of a patient, relating that profile to a pathological condition and then determining the most appropriate course of treatment, including drug selection and dosage levels. Monitoring of the treatment and adjusting the protocol in accordance with the progress of the patient may also be required.
Serum blood proteins may be indicative of a pathology and may change in response to drug administration to the patient. Most typically, blood samples are gathered by venal insertion of a needle and the collection of blood in milliliter amounts. Anticoagulants may be included to maintain the sample in the liquid state and the serum is obtained after centrifugation to remove cellular and particulate matter.
With the development of microarray analysis techniques, the use of far smaller blood serum samples than had been previously necessary for other analytical techniques is now possible. What is needed, therefore, is a means of collecting such small-volume samples in a form that can be readily stored with reduced or zero deterioration in the sample and which allows untrained persons, including the subject patient, to obtain the blood samples without the need of a trained technician to be present and subsequently transmit the sample to an analytical facility.